The announcement last week of the new Apple iPhone spurred tech mogul Cisco to initiate a lawsuit against Apple for trademark infringement. Cisco gained the rights to the term iPhone in 2000 with the purchase of Infogear of Redwood City, Ca. With all the fuss about who has the right to use the term iPhone, we thought we should at least check out the original product, the Linksys iPhone, which made its debut last December.
The Linksys iPhone is actually a family of internet phones that range in cost from about $60 to $160, and are pre loaded with Skype software, or in the case of the CIT310 model, Yahoo Messenger with voice. Most of the models are dual mode, allowing both Internet calls and regular land line calls.
The phones themselves are full featured cordless phones that support caller ID, call waiting, and a speaker phone, and have a digital display on the handset. The base for the phones have a USB port for a connection to your PC, and only the top model CIT400 does not require a computer, but you still must have a broadband connection.
Not wanting to compare apples to oranges (pun), the Linksys iPhone is an Internet phone in the truest sense, designed for use with the voip peer to peer network of Skype or Yahoo Messenger. The Apple iPhone on the other hand, at $500 and $600 is by far the smarter phone, but as of yet, no one really knows how Cingular plans to handle its Wi-Fi capabilities.
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